Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels

Description

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest contemporary authors who possesses that increasingly rare distinction of being a writer who is both popular with the general reading public and well-respected within the academic community. Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels presents eighteen fresh perspectives on the author's work that will appeal to those who read him for pleasure or for purposes of study. Established and rising critics reassess Ishiguro's works from the early 'Japanese' novels through to his short story cycle Nocturnes, paying particular attention to The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go. They address universal themes such as history, memory and mortality, but also provide groundbreaking explorations of diverse areas ranging from the posthuman and 'minor literature' to ethics, science fiction and Ishiguro's musical imagination. Featuring an insightful interview with Ishiguro himself, this collection of essays constitutes a significant contribution to the appreciation of his novels, and forms a lively and nuanced constellation of critical enquiry. Preface by Brian W. Shaffer.
Essays by: Jeannette Baxter, Caroline Bennett, Christine Berberich, Lydia R. Cooper, Sebastian Groes, Meghan Marie Hammond, Tim Jarvis, Barry Lewis, Liani Lochner, Christopher Ringrose, Victor Sage, Andy Sawyer, Motoyuki Shibata, Gerry Smyth, Krystyna Stamirowska, Motoko Sugano, Patricia Waugh, Alyn Webley.

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About Author

SEBASTIAN GROES is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Roehampton University, UK. BARRY LEWIS is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sunderland, UK.

Contents

List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Preface; B.Shaffer Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: 'It's Good Manners Really': Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethic of Empathy; S.Groes & B.Lewis PART I: CRITICAL OVERVIEWS Kazuo Ishiguro's Not Too Late Modernism; P.Waugh The Pedagogics of Liminality: Rites of Passage in the Work of Kazuo Ishiguro; V.Sage Lost and Found: On the Japanese Translations of Kazuo Ishiguro; M.Shibata 'One Word from You Could Alter the Course of Everything': Discourse and Identity in the Work of Kazuo Ishiguro; K.Stamirowska PART II: THE EARLY 'JAPANESE' WORKS 'In the Best of Faith': Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist if the Floating World in Japan; M.Sugano 'Cemeteries are No Places for Young People': The Representation of the Child in Kazuo Ishiguro's Early Works; C.Bennett PART III: THE REMAINS OF THE DAY 'I Can't Even Say I made My Own Mistakes': the Ethics of Genre in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day; M.Hammond Novelistic Practice and Ethical Philosophy in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day; L.Cooper Reading Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day: Working Through England's Traumatic Past as a Critique of Thacherism; C.Berberich PART IV: THE UNCONSOLED Into the Labyrinth: Reading Ishiguro's Surrealist Poetics in The Unconsoled; J.Baxter Waiting for the performance to Begin: Kazuo Ishiguro's Musical magination in The Unconsoled and Nocturnes; G.Smyth Into Ever Stranger Territories: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled as Minor Literature; T.Jarvis PART V: WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS 'In the End it has to Shatter': Ironic Doubleness of Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans; C.Ringrose When We Were Orphans: The Double Bind and the Vocational Imperative; A.Webley PART VI: NEVER LET ME GO The Concertina Effect in Kazuo ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; B.Lewis Something of a Lost Corner: The Representation of East Anglia in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; S.Groes 'Okay, this is as far as we can go': Scientific Discourse in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; L.Lochner Never Let Me Go and 'Outsider' Science Fiction; A.Sawyer The New Seriousness: Kazuo Ishiguro in Conversation with Sebastian Groes Bibliography Index